Tuesday

Saints

When air hangs in august treeslike phlegm to dying lungs,sticky skins thread sullen streetssweating Red Dog Rye;old men, young sons piss out their purposein vespine knots, mouths full of shit and speculation.Their spittle leaves pocks in the dirt.

Venerable interceders for Godpassing bottles and judgementsbehind taprooms festooned with pellitory.Sunday tongues hum around residual teeth,hackles rise above the somebody's fault line and the saints lay down their good books;gather up tindered principles, traditions like light-wood-

they bank them at the feet of crossesset to burn in their nieghbor's yards.

16 comments:

Here via Poetry Thursday (although I read some of the sites on your blogroll long before discovering Poetry Thurs.)

The first two lines of this poem crate an indelible image on my mind.As for the photograph, that is an explicit reminder why Jan.15th should be honoured for Martin Luther King and the principles of righteousness and freedom he promoted.

GRIND IT UP AND SPIT IT OUT, THEY SAID

Eat Your Words

"I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't."— Dylan Thomas